AMD/ATI to work on Centrino competitor

The Inquirer claims AMD's bid to take on Intel's extremely popular Centrino platform will get a boost thanks to ATI's mobile expertise:

The chip maker's Turion 64 and Turion X2 CPUs may be good step forward but AMD's key problem is that the memory controller is on the CPU and it cannot therefore go into an idle state. Nevertheless, our industry sources close to both camps claim that this might be one of the sweet spots of the DAAMIT deal.

The even more severe problem AMD has historically had to face is with its chipset support, as it has always had to work with third-party chipset manufacturers. At many points these could not offer warranties on either software and hardware side as much as the OEM wanted.

ATI knows a lot about mobility and has some very low-power mobile chipsets. It also knows a thing or two about power saving with discrete graphics. AMD will clearly benefit from this acquisition as it might be able to offer a complete platform with its Turion X2 CPU and ATI's integrated graphic chipset.